Saturday, July 28, 2018

NYT Very Surprised That "A Fear of Lawsuits Really Does Seem to Result in Extra Medical Tests"

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Defensive Medicine: Evidence from Military Immunity. Michael D. Frakes, Jonathan Gruber. NBER Working Paper No. 24846, July 2018. http://www...

Cognitive neuroscience of person identification: Comparing the processes by which people are identified through face & voice, find that face recognition accuracy suffers little or no cost with increases in set size; voice recognition accuracy declines markedly beyond a handful of possibilities

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The cognitive neuroscience of person identification. Irving Biederman et al. Neuropsychologia, Volume 116, Part B, 31 July 2018, Pages 205-2...

Trigger warnings may inadvertently undermine some aspects of emotional resilience: They increase peoples' perceived emotional vulnerability to trauma, the belief that trauma survivors are vulnerable, & increase anxiety to written material perceived as harmful

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Trigger warning: Empirical evidence ahead. Benjamin W.Bellet, Payton J.Jones, Richard J. McNally. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experiment...

When comparing ideal partner preferences, continually-coupled individuals rated Warmth/Trustworthiness and Vitality lower than newly-coupled individuals: Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according to their actual partner

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Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according to their actual partner. Radka Kučerová, Zsófia Csajbók, Jan Havlíček. Per...

Against the widespread belief that modern-day loneliness is inevitable, negative, and universal, loneliness is relatively recent invention, dating from around 1800 that needs to be understood firstly as an “emotion cluster” composed of a variety of affective states

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This “Modern Epidemic”: Loneliness as an Emotion Cluster and a Neglected Subject in the History of Emotions. Fay Bound Alberti. Emotion Revi...
Friday, July 27, 2018

Malicious poisonings: Agent choice was found to differ between experts & non-experts (depending on whether the event was a threat or a genuine contamination incident); attacks by poison experts were found to be no more deadly than attacks perpetrated by non-experts

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Poisoning expertise and outcomes in malicious contamination incidents. Sarah Kilbane. Journal of Criminal Psychology, https://www.emeraldins...

Rolf Degen summarizing: Neuroscientists failed to pinpoint the brain correlate of boredom, arguably because many people find their own thoughts so entertaining that they are not easily bored

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Finding Consistency in Boredom by Appreciating its Instability. Caitlin Mills, Kalina Christoff. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.o...

1932: The electoral sway of the Depression was quite limited, the government was not seen by most voters (including FDR ones) as the major culprit or as having been ineffective in alleviating it; moreover, there was no widespread “doom and gloom” about the future

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The American Voter in 1932: Evidence from a Confidential Survey. Helmut Norpoth. PS: Political Science & Politics, https://doi.org/10.10...

After deciding among moral (but not nonmoral) options, people (in Western cultures) tend to choose more variety in an unrelated task, likely because choosing more variety helps them reassert their sense of choice

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Kouchaki, M., Smith, I. H., & Savani, K. (2018). Does deciding among morally relevant options feel like making a choice? How morality co...

Musical activity during waking seems related to a higher amount of music dreams: About 6% of all remembered dreams contained music, & frequency was significantly higher when the participants spent time with music activities in waking (singing, playing an instrument)

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König, N., Fischer, N., Friedemann, M., Pfeiffer, T., Göritz, A. S., & Schredl, M. (2018). Music in dreams and music in waking: An onlin...

In professional settings gossipers are more likely to share positive and non-malicious gossip than negative and malicious one; gossipers tend to purposely plan the content to be shared by considering the target-receiver interpersonal closeness

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Are we truly wicked when gossiping at work? The role of valence, interpersonal closeness and social awareness. Vito Tassiello, Sara Lombardi...

How our brains may change as a function of systematic changes in our environments: We offer some initial predictions for changes in neural structure and function that may occur in the coming decades

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Varnum, Michael E. W., PhD, and Ryan S. Hampton. 2018. “Cultural Changes in Neural Structure and Function.” PsyArXiv. July 27. doi:10.31234/...
Thursday, July 26, 2018

Unintended Consequences of Eliminating Tax Havens: Shifting investment abroad, reducing domestic employment

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Unintended Consequences of Eliminating Tax Havens. Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato. NBER Working Paper No. 24850, July 2018. www.nber.org/papers/...

Happiness Scales: The findings in the literature are highly dependent on one's beliefs about the underlying distribution of happiness in society, or the social welfare function chosen; any conclusions derived rely on the assumption that all individuals report their happiness in the same way

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The Sad Truth About Happiness Scales: Empirical Results. Timothy N. Bond, Kevin Lang. NBER Working Paper No. 24853, July 2018. www.nber.org/...

Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males

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Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males. Joel Maczkowiack & Robert D Schweitzer. Journal of Sex & Marital Therap...

Most Recent Sexual Event: Respondents younger than 30 were significantly more likely to indicate they did not kiss because kissing would have been too intimate with their partner

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Kissing, Cuddling, and Massage at Most Recent Sexual Event: Findings from a U.S. Nationally Representative Probability Sample. Debby Herbeni...

Sexual behavior/experience was predicted by body fat percentage; in men, fantasy was related to total self-concept; sexual behavior/experience was related to likeability; in women, arousal was predicted by cardiovascular endurance; total self-concept was related to both orgasm and sex drive/desire

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An investigation of the relationship between physical fitness, self-concept, and sexual functioning. LM Jiannine, J Educ Health Promot. 2018...

Perceived physical strength in men is attractive to women but may come at a cost to ejaculate quality

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Perceived physical strength in men is attractive to women but may come at a cost to ejaculate quality. Yong Zhi Foo et al. Animal Behaviour,...
Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Children by the age of 6 begin to value ideas over labor; adults value the contribution of the laborer more than the contribution of the idea giver, even when examiners were idea givers; laborers receive more praise for positive outcomes, but less blame for negative outcomes, relative to idea givers

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Burgmer, P., Forstmann, M., & Stavrova, O. (2018). Ideas are cheap: When and why adults value labor over ideas. Journal of Experimental ...

Mate Choice Copying in Humans: Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice

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Mate Choice Copying in Humans: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Amany Gouda-Vossos et al. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, http...

The more positive (excited, interested, or happy) participants felt after one speed-dating interaction partner, the less attracted they were toward a new interaction partner, & the more negative they felt (irritated or bored), the more attracted they were

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The impact of emotions on romantic judgments. Sequential effects in a speed-dating study. Laura Sels et al. Journal of Social and Personal R...

Women are more likely to use social media in a conformist and protective way whereas men have a higher probability to be provocative; subjective life satisfaction more powerfully predicts provocative use compared to age or education

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Exploring Selective Exposure and Selective Avoidance Behavior in Social Media. Sanna Malinen, Aki Koivula, Teo Keipi, Ilkka Koiranen. SMSoci...
Monday, July 23, 2018

I Can Smell Them: People with more extreme political attitudes are better in inferring political affiliation from politicians' faces, regardless whether the politicians and perceivers are from the same or different countries

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Interpersonal accuracy in a political context is moderated by the extremity of one's political attitudes. Dominique Muller, Florian Delm...

Extramarital affairs tend to make people happy, helping to be in love & to have at least biweekly sexual events with the outside partner; and even after the outside partnership ends, there is a higher life satisfaction rating than before the outside partnership

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Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too: Factors Impacting Perception of Life Satisfaction During Outside Partnerships. Alicia M. Walker. Sexual...

Female Eye Attractiveness – Where Beauty Meets Science

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Female Eye Attractiveness – Where Beauty Meets Science. Martin Gründl et al. Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, https://doi.org/10.101...

Participants (n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load. Midway through the conversation, the researcher was replaced by another person. Thirty‐nine percent of participants failed to detect the change

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Perceptual load affects change blindness in a real‐world interaction. Gillian Murphy, Lisa Murphy. Applied Cognitive Psychology, https://doi...

People consistently remember being more generous in the past than they actually were; when people perceive their own actions as selfish, they can remember having acted more equitably, thus minimizing guilt and preserving their self-image

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Motivated misremembering: Selfish decisions are more generous in hindsight. Ryan W Carlson et al. https://psyarxiv.com/7ck25/ Significance s...
Sunday, July 22, 2018

The anger group showed higher levels of aggression and status seeking, with the moderator effect of anger intensity; also showed higher dominance scores, differing significantly from the fear, sadness, and/or control groups

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Effects of anger on dominance-seeking and aggressive behaviors. João Carlos Centurion Cabral, Rosa Maria Martins de Almeida. Evolution and H...

Why do angry people overestimate their intelligence? Neuroticism as a suppressor of the association between Trait-Anger and subjectively assessed intelligence

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Why do angry people overestimate their intelligence? Neuroticism as a suppressor of the association between Trait-Anger and subjectively ass...

Living in human environments help to develop motor skills, embodied cognition, & the use of objects to extend cognition in the animals, so the time needed for foraging for food is reduced, & furnishes opportunities for social learning, including emulation

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Cheng, K., & Byrne, R. W. (2018). Why human environments enhance animal capacities to use objects: Evidence from keas (Nestor notabilis)...
Saturday, July 21, 2018

Gains vs Losses: Anticipation is associated with time preference, such that the more people enjoy anticipating an event, the more they prefer to delay it, & the more they dread it, the more they prefer to accelerate it

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Kisses vs. shocks: Anticipation asymmetries explain time preferences for gains vs. losses. David J. Hardisty, Shane Frederick, Elke U. Weber...

Maternal pregnancy exposures are assumed to affect offspring health; other factors like paternal & postnatal exposures are also likely to be important, but maternal ones are assumed to be most important; we need to retain a critical perspective regarding this assumption

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It's the mother!: How assumptions about the causal primacy of maternal effects influence research on the developmental origins of health...

Rabbits may be able to detect conspecifics in their predators’ scats, thus leading them to, in the short term, avoid areas in which their terrestrial predators’ diet is based on conspecifics, probably as the result of them perceiving a higher risk of predation

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European rabbits recognise conspecifics in their predators’ diets. Laura M. Prada, José Guerrero-Casado, Francisco S. Tortosa. acta ethologi...

Males reversed their initial preference for larger females in the presence of a conspecific audience male because they recognized the audience male as a competitor and tried to deceive that male about their real mating preference

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Test of the Deception Hypothesis in Atlantic Mollies Poecilia mexicana —Does the Audience Copy a Pretended Mate Choice of Others? Klaudia Wi...

Secularity, religiosity, and health: Physical and mental health differences between atheists, agnostics, and nonaffiliated theists compared to religiously affiliated individuals

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Secularity, religiosity, and health: Physical and mental health differences between atheists, agnostics, and nonaffiliated theists compared ...
Friday, July 20, 2018

Mate value at a glance: Facial attractiveness reveals women's waist-to-hip ratio and men's household income

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Mate value at a glance: Facial attractiveness reveals women's waist-to-hip ratio and men's household income. Ji-eun Shin, Eunkook M....

Lay people do not have stable, logically rigorous notions of free will & are strongly motivated to preserve free will and moral responsibility

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Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism. Cory J Clark, Bo Winegard, Roy Baumeister...

Individuals low in cognitive resources are not more likely to follow partisan cues than are individuals high in cognitive resources; the highest level of cue receptivity is observed for those individuals who have both a strong social identification with their party & high cognitive resources

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An Expressive Utility Account of Partisan Cue Receptivity: Cognitive Resources in the Service of Identity Expression. Yphtach Lelkes, Ariel ...

Women in committed relationships would be more likely to reveal their status to a potential copulation partner due to the man’s preference for short-term mating; a man would do conceal his being less able to provide time, commitment, & resources

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Hughes, S. M., & Harrison, M. A. (2018). Women reveal, men conceal: Current relationship disclosure when seeking an extrapair partner. E...

Compared to the “very happily” married, those “not too happy” in marriage were over 2x as likely to report worse health & almost 40% more likely to die over the follow-up period, & had equal or worse health & mortality risk than the never married/divorced/separated, or widowed

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Marital Happiness, Marital Status, Health, and Longevity. Elizabeth M. Lawrence et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, https://link.springer.c...

Heritability of Regional Brain Volumes in Large-Scale Neuroimaging and Genetic Studies: exhibit a symmetric pattern across left and right hemispheres, & are consistent in females & males

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Heritability of Regional Brain Volumes in Large-Scale Neuroimaging and Genetic Studies. Bingxin Zhao et al. Cerebral Cortex, bhy157, https:/...
Thursday, July 19, 2018

Big parts of Italy, Greece, Spain are quite like wide areas in China: Silent contempt for the existing rules within China is due to people not respecting the method for creating and establishing those rules

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This post's title is mine. The original post I based my comment on is a post about China and the US by Christopher Balding in Balding...

Stronger intellectual abilities are associated with greater cortical thickness (CT) and cortical volume (CV); in relation to measured intelligence, CT and CV are more relevant measures than cortical surface area or cortical gyrification

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The Relationship Between General Intelligence and Cortical Structure in Healthy Individuals. Sahil Bajaj et al. Neuroscience, https://doi.or...

Sunk costs are irrecoverable investments that should not influence decisions; decisions should be made on the basis of expected future consequences; but mice, rats, and humans show similar sensitivities to sunk costs in their decision-making, a vulnerability distinct from deliberation processes

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Sensitivity to “sunk costs” in mice, rats, and humans. Brian M. Sweis et al. Science Jul 13 2018, Vol. 361, Issue 6398, pp. 178-181. DOI: 10...

Dopamine: Its reward related function regulates the processes of energy consumption and acquisition in the body; thenergy-related book-keeping of the body at the physiological level is the common motif that links the many facets of dopamine and its functions

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The many facets of dopamine: Toward an integrative theory of the role of dopamine in managing the body's energy resources. Srinivasa Cha...

Focusing on time (vs. money) increases happiness; having too little or too much time is linked to less happiness; to be happier, people should spend the time they have deliberately

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It’s time for happiness. Cassie Mogilner. Current Opinion in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.07.002 Highlights •    Focusi...

Men displaying faster articulation rate and louder voices reported significantly more sexual partners; women who displayed relatively less breathy voices and shorter speech duration reported significantly fewer sexual partners

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Human vocal behavior within competitive and courtship contexts and its relation to mating success. Alexandre Suire, Michel Raymond, Melissa ...

Firearm-related violence are highly increasing in Sweden, mostly due togang-related crimes; knife/sharp weapon still most common Modus Operandi in homicides/attempted homicides; Gun Shot Wound to the head and thorax are most fatal

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Firearm-related violence in Sweden – A systematic review. Ardavan Khoshnood. Aggression and Violent Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb....
Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Financial misconduct rates differ widely between major cities, up to a factor of three; rates strongly related to other unethical behavior, involving politicians, doctors, and (potentially unfaithful) spouses, in the city

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The Geography of Financial Misconduct. Christopher A Parsons, Johan Sulaeman, Sheridan Titman. The Journal of Finance, https://doi.org/10.11...

Have women always lived so much longer than men? The answer is that they have not, only after the sharp reduction in infectious disease in the early twentieth century

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XX>XY?: The Changing Female Advantage in Life Expectancy. Claudia Goldin & Adriana Lleras-Muney. NBER Working Paper, June 2018. http:...